a solitary vulture circled in the sky like a drunk weaving out of a bar at the end of the night whoa  whoa whoaah whoa   Ah shit 

          then somehow other barflies found himhow they found themselves hed never knew  but he never questioned anything that happened naturally  they coalesced like lazybeads of mercury on bathroom tiles from a broken thermometer  their numbers grew  quicklyindeterminately he guessed twentysomething two twentyfive maybe  maybe thirty  thirty drunks having spun off their barstools congregating  hazardously  pointing wingtips accusing each other circling clockwise daring one among them to turn counterclockwise and bring their flurrytheir tall cyclone down out of the sky

abstractly they reminded him of the ManOWars the frigates he searched the South Pacific sky for with glasses to lead the seiner he was aboard to tuna  looking for birds or sodden logs a rope anything afloat that a food chain might gather beneath  old fishermen swore that for every bird in the sky ten tons of tuna were under it  he remembered once when there were more birds than he could count and on two successive sets they brought onboard twohundred an forty twohundred an twenty tons of fish after beginning the voyage with a drought that lasted forty days and ended only after Jamaicans performed an exorcism to free the ship of its former assistant engineers spirit  Joe Spano  who wasnt rehired was left on the beach and died of a massive heart attack not three days after they disembarked

he smiled he never questioned anything that happened naturally  amid the swirling drunken vultures he saw the sober flight of a hawk who must have wondered how it got caught up in their numbers maybe she or he was an interloper a young bird who learned to scavenge rather than the kill and because of its superior reflexes it beat the vultures to the ground and got the choicest morsels before the tribe arrived 

an elegant opportunist

adaptable 

                    the kind of thing he couldnt be  because he didnt value illgotten gains or sought profit with a camaraderie of thieves and villains or those who banded together because separately they couldnt flourish

he didnt think there was ten tons of deadmeat under these birds unless of course they were black feathered harbingers pointing their unsteady wingtips to a future beyond the arc of the horizon                 

1638,  Monday,  11  2. 19

1046,  Twosday,  19  2. 19

Jefferson Starship  Hijack  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H57IyHNq-_8